Saturday, August 23, 2008

Sprinkler problem leaves school wet

Argen Duncan El Defensor Chieftain Reporter, aduncan@dchieftain.com

A sprinkler malfunctioned at Parkview Elementary School early Wednesday morning and flooded the hallway that houses the kindergarten and preschool classrooms.

About 120 kindergartners and 30 preschool students were displaced. The rest of the school operated as normal.

Thursday evening, Socorro Consolidated Schools Superintendent Cheryl Wilson said the floors were dry, but the walls were still a little moist from the water they had soaked up. She expected the walls to dry out over the weekend and students to return to the classrooms on Monday.

Wilson said one sprinkler head in one classroom went off at 2 a.m. on Wednesday. After 4 a.m., a neighbor heard the alarm the sprinkler activated and called Socorro firefighters. Although the fire department quickly responded, the kindergarten and New Mexico Pre-K classes were flooded by that time. Wilson had no estimate of the cost of the problem, but said the incident did little damage.

"At this point, with the exception of that one classroom, it's pretty minor," she said.

School employees, with help from the firefighters, had to remove the water. Wilson said the firefighters stayed for hours to help custodians and maintenance crewmembers.

Water removal took a couple of hours, but the rest of the clean up continued for some time after.

Most classrooms only had water on the floor. However, the classroom with the malfunctioning sprinkler had damaged ceiling tiles and school materials as well.

Wilson didn't know why the sprinkler head malfunctioned.

"That will take a while for that to be sorted out and figured out," she said.

Before students could return to classrooms, the restoration service had to certify that walls were dry and there was no potential for mold growth. Wilson expected the room with the malfunctioning sprinkler to take more time to clean up.

"That one will take longer, but we have an extra room in the building we can use," Wilson said.

Until then, kindergartners rotated through "specials" such as art, computer time and gym class and used other parts of the school all day.

School employees called the parents of pre-K students and had them keep those children at home until the classrooms were ready. Pre-K students had started school on Monday, Aug. 18, Wilson said, and school staff members thought it would be hard for them to handle an alternate schedule like the kindergartners' so early in the year.

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